Expugno
by Iseki
Summary: Denny visits Chelsea during a particularly hard storm of nature and sentiment. She waits and preserves and recalls all the times she fell in love with Vaughn. Oneshot. ChelseaxVaughn minor one-sided Denny feelings.


**Summary: Denny visits Chelsea during a particularly hard storm of nature and sentiment. She waits and preserves and recalls all the times she fell in love with Vaughn. Flashback fic of drama-fluff. ChelseaxVaughn minor one-sided Denny feelings.**

**Regular text is present while italics are flashback.**

Late Morning on Ranch Island was lazy and humid. The land owner, Chelsea, was working among her neat rows of corn dreamily, taking breaks to wipe a gloved wrist across her brow or tie the hem of her shirt in a knot at her midriff when the sky turned dark and the wind picked up sending the unsettled dust off the field into a whorl around her. Trying to guard her eyes from it, her ears pricked at a distant sound that made her heart race. She pushed her way through the corn, not careful of breaking any of the young stalks and ran to her home. Inside the noise was cacophonous and she traced it down to the bundle wrapped and previously unworried in his cot: her son Flynn.

She warily pressed the back of her hand to his cheek and confirmed her fears. It was aflame; he had fever. Her doe-like eyes were sympathetic: a fever in this heat would make her miserable as well. She fetched a damp cloth and held it across his small forehead and his wailing subsided somewhat. He looked up at his mother, batting big eyes as deep as sapphires, as if it was the first time she'd done right by him. The combination of light-coloured hair and flushed cheeks with a temperamental expression was so like his father in that moment that her smile spread quickly and she pressed a quick kiss to his nose. Flynn seemed to tolerate the token so long as she kept dabbing his forehead with the cloth.

"There, we're all right. Just a little summer storm." She cooed as his eyelids began to droop. The temperature really was miserable; with her free hand she pulled the buttons of her shirt apart at the collarbone. The rain had begun to wash over the roof like waves, the shutters on the windows rattled, the humidity pressed in; Flynn made a tiny mewl of contempt. Another all too familiar sound.

_She had been awake for a while now. If he were to look over she would pinch her eyes shut and even her breathing: a valiant attempt to pretend. But his head remained on his pillow. Tousled silver hair in knots, ears barely visible. He lay on his side with his back to her. Two days ago they were married. Her stomach still did flips when she thought of it. The engagement had gone so fast, he had been gone for most of it, and now here they were. Still in separate beds but waking up to the comforting sight of each other. He shifted, the muscles in his shoulders moving and a small sound of discontent escaping from deep in his chest. He was waking up. _

_So, she thought, there were even days that the ultimate earlier riser Vaughn didn't want to leave the warmth of his bed. Somehow learning this made her bold. Carefully she extracted herself from her own bed and crept across to his, seating herself on the edge as gently as possible and leaning over to kiss him good-morning._

"…_you were awake?" _

_His eyes were nervously set on the wall and his cheeks were red, "You__'__re not the most discrete observer."_

_She was also beginning to blush in response, "As your wife I don__'__t have to be discrete." Dazzling amethyst eyes finally fixed on her. She took a deep breath and one final swing at the boundaries that divided them. Placing her hands firmly on the pillow at either side of his head she caught his mouth with hers. She abandoned any apprehension in her kiss and was rewarded with the result. He pulled her down against him and she was supple to his claim. _

A heavy bang on the door shocked her from her reverie and set Flynn crying again. She left the less-than-cool cloth on her son's forehead and ran to answer it, mind racing as to who would be out in this weather. She opened the door tentatively, hardened old city habits making her wary of strangers, but was surprised to see sodden purple bandanna and curls hanging limply across droopy dark eyes like that of a guilty puppy.

"Denny!" She threw the door open and hauled him inside before the rain could follow. Flynn was hiccupping between cries. Denny stood in the entryway dripping as he rubbed his hands mildly against his bare arms while she rushed away to fetch him a towel. She stopped at Flynn's side to replace the cool cloth against his head and pass him a teething ring which he seemed to be interested in for a second before he batted it away and resumed his lament. Chelsea sighed hearing this but returned to Denny to start scrubbing the towel vigorously against his hair.

"What were you doing out in that? Is something wrong?" she muttered and _tsked_ about the lack of even a coat as she rattled the insides of his head with her ministrations of the towel. Carefully his hands found her wrists and pulled them away. The towel dropped to his shoulders. His lips were in a firm line and his eyes were swimming.

"Chelsea… I had to see you."

_He stood; his gloved hands passed the rim of his hat between fingers slowly turning it in front of his lap. She sat on one of the furthest pews from the front watching Sabrina light candles, and Alisa lead her in prayer._

"_I will…never see him again." Her fingers held the program too tightly making wrinkles in the paper. Taro'__s smile printed on the front was becoming misshapen. The tear stains from before had made some of the lettering illegible. _

_His answer followed a long time after; he chose his words carefully. "You have your memories. You have what he taught you." He sat down next to her, his shoulder against hers in a show of support. "You made him proud." She felt the floodgates open once more, if only for him recognizing her grief and trying to see her through it. Her forehead dropped until it touched that strong shoulder and she wept there. _

_When she was too exhausted to stand he carried her home. In front of their hearth to dry off from the cold wet snow that was falling that day he told her some of what he could remember of his family for the first time. Enticing her out of her pain with answers she had longed to know._

_Parents departed at the young age of four, passed between relatives who had children of their own to care for before finally breaking free at fifteen to room and board with an elderly widower as the ranch hand. His gloom and loneliness seemed to follow. He didn't admit as much but the short descriptions of those he stayed with reflected it there. He wandered, he would accept no love._

_The old widower had no love to offer, so camaraderie was formed through the bonds of solitude. _

_The animals were desperate for the care they had once been given before the old man had lost his wife and the dexterity in his hands. "Jack", as the old man was known, was neither unfriendly nor ruthless in his teaching simply tired and withdrawn but he had much knowledge to give. He stayed with Jack until his passing late one night in his sleep on the veranda. The will named a son and himself as sole proprietors of all his earthly possessions which were few. _

_After one last night on the ranch, he drove the cattle to the city and sold what was of value. The money got his foot in the door of the trading business. He part-timed here and there until it picked up and he had a monopoly of the clients on nearby islands, and some of the finest breeds for miles. That was his life, business was his life. Until one island and one day a big set of baby blues fell on him and called him out. _

"_If Jack could see me now."_

_Her face was hot. If there were tears left to fall they would turn to steam and evaporate into the atmosphere. "I was never that forward."_

"_I'__ve never known a woman to so thoroughly ignore the signs."_

_Her lip poked out and her hands found her hips, "Then you should be thankful for my ignorance."_

_There was the light '_shuff' _of a glove removed before his palm cupped her cheek and the other hand guided her to the floor. "I__'__m thankful." His thumb wiped away one last tear, rough and yet gentle at the same time. His lips brushed there next, beneath her eye. She caught the change in his expression; the shared pain at seeing her break. "let me show you how thankful." His twang was heavy with such headstrong words, so that she wanted to laugh but was too far gone in his eyes and adoration._

"Vaughn." She breathed his name like a sound but Denny caught it and dropped her wrists. The whisper was like a bullet through the assurance of his movements, and once again he was sagging like an abandoned dog.

"I shouldn't have come." She watched him and said nothing. Flynn's cries and the noise of the storm filled the bleak silence. Eventually he staggered to a chair and slumped there.

Chelsea went to supplicate her son once more, this time cradling him to her breast and speaking softly as she bounced. "What did you expect me to say?"

Seeing her with _his _child firmly nuzzled against the skin of her open collar further impacted the question. "I-I didn't expect you to say anything." He began lamely. "I only wanted to comfort you… like I used to."

She struggled to stay firm. It was always difficult in the face of unexpected kindness. "You wanted to comfort me?" her voice shook, "You want me to accept what isn't true."

Denny's face was full of pity; his optimistic grin seemed a distant memory in comparison. "It's been three weeks, Chelsea…" Her breathing hitched to hear the days, the minutes, the seconds summed up so brusquely. _Just_ three weeks she wanted to say. He's tougher than that. But her mouth was full of cotton wool.

_Their kitchen was a disaster. It was as if the bull had been let in. Fortunately, she hadn__'__t committed to using their good china. She never quite had the finesse for fine things; she was clumsy. He told her so. _

_When she tripped and spilled their first high-class milk from the calf they__'__d raised together: clumsy._

_When she told him how Elliot had asked her to help him pick out a ring when Julia walked in: clumsy. _

_When she slipped and fell into his lap after her bath and her towel loosened and her fingers grazed… clumsy and a little bit deliberate._

_She accepted that she made mistakes, and that she was an accident waiting to happen. So when a friend of hers overseas took over an island farm like her own and sent word of a "thanksgiving festival" she accepted that she would probably make a mess of things but that she__'__d try anyway. She left the kitchen in that state and embarked upon her cake-giving journey with pride: because it wasn't the taste that mattered really it was the significance of the gift. _

_Vaughn was still out on business and she managed to hand out every last package of cake before he was expected back. Albeit she lost a little time explaining the whole idea and who she heard it from to the ecstatic pair of Mirabelle and Felicia, therefore when she got back he was already home. Stood on ground zero. Boots crushing loose sugar and cocoa against the floor boards and finger extended to wipe a line through the filmy layer of egg and flour plastered across most the counter-top. _

_She stood rooted to her place in the doorway as she watched his back, fearful of his lecture. It was more his kitchen than hers after all._

_When he turned away from the chaos and found her she was surprised to see his face was not the anticipated frown of disapproval but a slow and lazy, somewhat lopsided grin. He crunched across the floor towards her and pulled a strand of her hair that had glued to her chin by some solidified batter. "Clumsy."_

_She began to laugh apprehensively, a few short noises, which charmed a deep chuckle from him. When she heard this and glimpsed his smiling eyes she laughed more vividly. He ruffled her mess of bandanna and hair and his chuckles became synchronous baritone to her soprano._

Flynn's feverish skin was melded against her own. "Three weeks is nothing." The baby struggled against her grip and wailed furiously seeming to voice the inner cry she dare not let out.

Denny was up out of his chair and abruptly next to her, "We're all worried! No one's seen you around town. You missed a check-up with Dr. Trent. Julia said that when she tried to see you wouldn't answer the door!"

"Yes!" she had shouted; cutting atop his smooth but concerned voice that was rushing to convince her. "Because things have to be exactly as there were when he left…." Hearing her reasons aloud made them suddenly seem desperate. Flynn was either sharing in her realization or had succumbed to sleep settling in her hold once more. They were both waiting. They would wait forever. The silence filled her ears and her knees became weak.

_She had never even ridden a horse. Not after three eventful years had she even tried to mount her pony. Vaughn only saw that as a challenge._

"_Are you scared?"_

"_Not scared per se…" she twisted a lock of hair between her fingers as he groomed the roan in preparation to saddle. "Just nervous. What if she doesn't__ like it?" she stroked the old girl__'__s mane and she nickered in return, butting her nose up against Chelsea__'__s palm._

"_She will. They live to run." He was adjusting and tightening the saddle now across her back quite professionally. "What better than to run for the first time with your partner," he added without a hint of teasing. When he finished he patted the horse on the rump and passed the reigns to Chelsea to lead her out. "You'__ll do fine."_

_Once outside the stable he slipped his hands under her armpits and lifted to help get her foot in the stirrup. She sucked her bottom lip between her teeth and looked out at the expanse of the farm. She knew what to do next, he__'__d taught her well, but she was lingering between excitement and trepidation. Vaughn took of his hat and patted it as if to free it of dust. There was none but afterwards he dropped it on her head._

_He studied her and nodded. "Now you look convincing." A smile grew lovely on her lips; her excitement won, and her confidence peaked. She gently dug her heels into her pony__'__s sides and knocked the reigns against her neck. The horse whinnied and set their first ride at a steady canter; obedient at the first of her long time friend. When the pair became more comfortable they sped up and slowed down, turned quickly, and pranced around the fence where the other animals spoke appreciatively. All the while her husband monitored protectively._

Denny had his arms wrapped around her. Her knees had buckled and brought her to the floor. His skin still held a chill from the rain although the room seemed to crackle in the thick electricity of breaking heat.

"Soon." Her voice croaked and the tightness in her throat surprised her. "He'll be back soon. Any day now."

His mouth was against her hairline: friendly or not she couldn't find the strength to push him away. Her shoulders shook as she fought with angry hot tears soundlessly, heedful of Flynn's fitful sleep.

"_You're not listening."_

"_I am listening, Vaughn. I'm listening even when there's no meaning to it."_

"_Then you should realize how ridiculous you're being." He paced._

_Even her ears were burning. He had a really detestable way of making her feel small sometimes. That cool even voice when she couldn't keep her own from fluctuating. "I can't believe what I'm hearing. You're saying this to _me_?"_

"_Yes, Chelsea. To _you_. Because _you _are not always right."_

_There was an overwhelming urge to throw something or make a noise. Like a child throwing a tantrum. He didn't stay to see if she would. He gave her one last withering look and was out the door. To the fields, to the stables, to the ferry; either way he'd done as he always did and left so that they could both cool their heads. She knew when they got this far under each other's skin that it was necessary before they said anything too regrettable but that didn't stop her from stamping a foot unsympathetically against the floorboards and letting out a high-pitched 'ooohh' of pent up frustration._

_A clatter of plastic and chiming came from Flynn's crib where he was blissfully unaware of his parents' unease. His innocent titter of delight as he slapped at the mobile that hung above stole much of Chelsea's anger away. She went to his side and ruffled his mess of pale hair with a tiny smile forming on her lips._

"_At least you won't talk me down for a few years." As if trying to disprove the statement he began to squirm and his sounds of delight turned to that of irascibility. She hefted him to her shoulder for a changing, exasperation in her voice once more "Yeah, yeah. I hear you."_

Vaughn had returned long enough for a quiet lunch and a pat for Flynn before his afternoon nap. He responded to her sparse conversation as minutely as possible; their equal stubbornness trusting apologies for later. Then he was due at a cow show in the city. The boat ready and waiting. But she wasn't sure whether it made it there or not. Three weeks seemed to pass so quickly and yet it was an eternity.

Hastily, she recovered. Her ever-present angel, Flynn, soothed her with each peaceful breath that floated across her collarbone. Once Denny could see that she was consoled he removed his arms and straightened with some awkwardness that was becoming in him; a light blush surfacing in his cheeks. He scratched under the towel around his neck.

"I get it," he spoke without disillusionment. The same Denny she'd confided upon arrival, all those years ago. "If I was in your position I'm not sure I could do the same, but…" eyes that were like polished dark stones fixed on her, "I'm sure he'll be back soon." With a nod she thanked him for not pursuing the argument any further: for not voicing the opinion of gossip that she suspected to be travelling. There was no wreckage found after all. She tried on her most natural smile.

"But he shouldn't make you wait much longer." Strong, devout Denny gave her another quick one-armed hug as if he was making a promise and pressed a chaste kiss to her forehead. He laughed that he was going to borrow her towel for a little while longer and was gone. It was only then that she realized the storm had subsided.

…

The next morning was just as warm but the storm had left the air clear and the sky bright. The baby stalks of corn seemed to have faced a great battle and stood proudly next to the elder plants, only a few leaves missing here and there, an ear lying in the dirt. Her tomatoes however had not been as lucky. Chelsea was making use of her small glossary of curse words as she dug the hoe deep to their roots and scrapped away their remains. They came away easily thanks to the moisture in the soil, but she mused that it was almost as if their will to grow had left before the end of the torrent.

She wiped the back of her glove across her sweaty brow, ignoring the feeling of loose dirt sticking to her skin. Although she should be upset that an entire crop was lost and she'd spend the day cleaning up after the squall, the weather refreshed her. It felt as though the storm in her heart had passed as well. Flynn's fever dispersed through the night and they both slept quite soundly.

She lay back in the field, as she was wont to do during thoughtfulness; above her the sky a blue expanse stretching beyond comprehension. The firm substance of her ranch was pressing with all it's weight into her back; a bawl from her lamb, a whisper from the corn filtered to her ears. Was it alright to stay? She'd thought to seek out her parents to care for Flynn and scour the city for him. Maybe he needed her to. Was she doing the right thing? She missed his guidance. Yearned for his sometimes ruthless dissection of her actions. What would he do if she was the one who had left?

She was so lethargic with the sun beating on her eyelids that she nearly ignored the sound of feet crunching through upturned soil. Her eyes flew open and she shot upright to find the source of the noise.

He looked as startled as she must have; she was seeing a three week old ghost, and he had jumped when she erupted from the shadows of her corn rows. The toes of her boots slid and slipped along the clods of earth both dry and watered, her hands clawing to keep her balance when she nearly lost it. Whether he was the greatest hallucination she'd ever conceived or solid and real she didn't mind as she threw her arms around him and gratefully heard him grunt as she knocked his breath out.

"Vaughn!" her fingers flew over his face, his biceps, into his pockets, across his knuckles; any part of him to test reality.

"Yeah," He was holding her shoulders steady, a serene expression on his face as she searched him and recited his name over and over like a prayer.

A sob racked her, "you idiot," she slammed a fist against his chest, and then buried her face there. His clothes smelled musky of dust and time.

"Yeah…" he answered simply; securing her against him in a tight embrace. "I'm home."

**A/N: Thank you to all my reviewers, those who've read Iridescence and 7 Days. This is for you. Since I've moved on to Tree of Tranquility I wasn't sure whether I'd still find Chelsea and Vaughn to write. But thanks to a lovely review from Random Jelly Beans I picked up a plot bunny I'd stowed and completed it. I hope it's been enjoyable!**

**To those of you raging at me for everything left unsaid: try it yourself! Leaving blanks is a real treat! I wanted everyone to draw their own conclusions as to what happened to Vaughn, why they fought, and how Chelsea had been living up until now. I wanted to focus solely on the interactions. With such a short piece, this is how I roll. If you want something more background heavy there is plenty of delicious multi-chapter fic out there *smile***

**Does anyone actually know the default name of the son? I went with Flynn because it seemed fitting and sounded cute, but I haven't actually had my pregnancy in-game yet… "Jack" was what one of the first Harvest Moon characters went by. Also I know nothing of horseback riding and we may have a small case of "did not do the research" so forgive me. But it seemed logical enough and I'm lazy.**

**Finally: Denny. I tried to woo him before I undertook the challenge of Vaughn. This was slightly inspired by that. Full hearts, ready to make the commitment and the girl suddenly refocuses her attention on a hotshot cowboy from the city who blesses the island with his presence 2 days a week? Ouch. Would you get over that? I can't decide whether he's out of character or not as we never really see Denny pushed within the game. Either way, I wasn't trying to demonize him for trying to get in between our pairing; I simply needed a plot device. I quite like Denny and the contrast between him and Vaughn. I hope it came across as such despite his bittersweet departure. I'm sure Lanna was there on the other side to comfort him.**

**Thanks again for reading, whether you liked it or not please drop a review! It not only fuels more writing but can improve whatever I put out next.**


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